Nolan, Peggy

Describing her process of photographing the objects and remnants of activities in her domestic space, Peggy Nolan wrote "the secrets of life are lodged in ordinariness." This is the ordinariness that surrounds us everyday-a trace of light crawling across the ceiling at the end of the day, yesterday's dirty underwear waiting to be picked up off the floor, a forgotten accessory left behind on a freshly made bed.

These are objects and moments we walk past on our way out the door and that surround us as we relax on the couch at the end of the day, the physical and visual clutter that we unconsciously amass through daily needs and habits.

Nolan's carefully crafted photographs pay homage to these seemingly unremarkable events of domestic life with acuity and formal grace. The images are windows into a completely familiar yet surprisingly beautiful and mysterious world.

Our bodies are the unwitting repositories of our conscious pursuits and of the unending familiarity of everyday, physical experiences repeated over and over again. In Nolan's work, this interior world is emulated through objects and mementos that surround most of us-a lock of hair from a child's first trim, fading black-and-white photographs of little known or forgotten relatives, receipts kept after uncertain purchases-ordinary possessions that for the most part remain invisible, becoming activated on occasions of nostalgic recollection or when put to use in the service of domestic necessity. The space between our experience and these objects, the private life they live, is often more elusive. Through these images we are reminded, not just of a forgotten memento or of a material function, but of the more organic function these objects serve.

This physicality is alluded to through description of traces left behind, in the occasional self-portrait of Nolan's feet or hands, and perhaps most significantly in the photographer's gaze, which positions each viewer in the same intimate relationship to the artist's space as when the image was made. This metaphysical locale is revealed in images of a small bundle of hair and lint illuminated by light creeping under a door, in the gnawed leg of a kitchen table (the result of a disobedient pet), or in the anonymous gaze of a woman staring back at us from a cheap plastic frame on a kitchen wall.

The subtle beauty of the images, with careful attention to color and light, hold the residue of a life lived, bearing witness to an experience of the banal made extraordinary. These depictions of domesticity act as proxies for the internal life of the artist, infusing each image with a certainty of purpose most provocative and mysterious.

Nolan spent a majority of her adult life raising her seven children (I was fortunate to have been one of them). The demands of child rearing and the concerns of adolescence-subject matter of her previous work-are now replaced by a sense of quiet that makes its way into every corner of her photographs. Like most aging parents, especially those with many children, the artist has had to redefine her work, both as an artist and a parent. The spaces that were once the arena of dirty diapers and sweaty teenage bodies echo with silence and absence, and the photographs, in their spare eloquence, suggest empty stages. While these new images can be understood through the careful arrangements of the materials and surfaces they depict, they are perhaps more strongly read as the individual pursuit of the artist discovering the world anew.

One could ask, given the necessity of daily routines and the gravity of world events, how art that takes the material of ordinary life as its subject could possibly compete for our attention? A better question might be, how we can make our way through the persistent media bombardment and the competing demands of our daily routines to have a meaningful exchange with the more intimate worlds of our inner life? Nolan's work attempts to address these fundamental questions in photographs that ask us to rejoice in the act of paying attention.

(c) 2006 Abner Nolan

Peggy Levison Nolan lives in Hollywood, FL, and teaches at the University of Florida in Miami. She participated in Light Work's Artist-in-Residence program
in June 2005.

Abner Nolan is an artist and curator living in San Francisco, CA. He is currently an adjunct professor at the California College of the Arts.

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Describing her process of photographing the objects and remnants of activities in her domestic space, Peggy Nolan wrote "the secrets of life are lodged in ordinariness." This is the ordinariness that surrounds us everyday-a trace of light crawling across the ceiling at the end of the day, yesterday's dirty underwear waiting to be picked up off the floor, a forgotten accessory left behind on a freshly made bed.

These are objects and moments we walk past on our way out the door and that surround us as we relax on the couch at the end of the day, the physical and visual clutter that we unconsciously amass through daily needs and habits.

Nolan's carefully crafted photographs pay homage to these seemingly unremarkable events of domestic life with acuity and formal grace. The images are windows into a completely familiar yet surprisingly beautiful and mysterious world.

Our bodies are the unwitting repositories of our conscious pursuits and of the unending familiarity of everyday, physical experiences repeated over and over again. In Nolan's work, this interior world is emulated through objects and mementos that surround most of us-a lock of hair from a child's first trim, fading black-and-white photographs of little known or forgotten relatives, receipts kept after uncertain purchases-ordinary possessions that for the most part remain invisible, becoming activated on occasions of nostalgic recollection or when put to use in the service of domestic necessity. The space between our experience and these objects, the private life they live, is often more elusive. Through these images we are reminded, not just of a forgotten memento or of a material function, but of the more organic function these objects serve.

This physicality is alluded to through description of traces left behind, in the occasional self-portrait of Nolan's feet or hands, and perhaps most significantly in the photographer's gaze, which positions each viewer in the same intimate relationship to the artist's space as when the image was made. This metaphysical locale is revealed in images of a small bundle of hair and lint illuminated by light creeping under a door, in the gnawed leg of a kitchen table (the result of a disobedient pet), or in the anonymous gaze of a woman staring back at us from a cheap plastic frame on a kitchen wall.

The subtle beauty of the images, with careful attention to color and light, hold the residue of a life lived, bearing witness to an experience of the banal made extraordinary. These depictions of domesticity act as proxies for the internal life of the artist, infusing each image with a certainty of purpose most provocative and mysterious.

Nolan spent a majority of her adult life raising her seven children (I was fortunate to have been one of them). The demands of child rearing and the concerns of adolescence-subject matter of her previous work-are now replaced by a sense of quiet that makes its way into every corner of her photographs. Like most aging parents, especially those with many children, the artist has had to redefine her work, both as an artist and a parent. The spaces that were once the arena of dirty diapers and sweaty teenage bodies echo with silence and absence, and the photographs, in their spare eloquence, suggest empty stages. While these new images can be understood through the careful arrangements of the materials and surfaces they depict, they are perhaps more strongly read as the individual pursuit of the artist discovering the world anew.

One could ask, given the necessity of daily routines and the gravity of world events, how art that takes the material of ordinary life as its subject could possibly compete for our attention? A better question might be, how we can make our way through the persistent media bombardment and the competing demands of our daily routines to have a meaningful exchange with the more intimate worlds of our inner life? Nolan's work attempts to address these fundamental questions in photographs that ask us to rejoice in the act of paying attention.

(c) 2006 Abner Nolan

Peggy Levison Nolan lives in Hollywood, FL, and teaches at the University of Florida in Miami. She participated in Light Work's Artist-in-Residence program
in June 2005.

Abner Nolan is an artist and curator living in San Francisco, CA. He is currently an adjunct professor at the California College of the Arts.